Julie Ruin
by roseweasleytyler
Summary: We spent such a lot of time fighting each other before we knew who really needed to be fought.
1. Prologue

(**A/N**. Cover image credit goes to the wonderful tumblr user cecaelias, post/74018513777/ thank you so much!)

* * *

_Breathe in._

_Don't think._

_Breathe out._

_Don't think._

_Breathe in._

Julie and Remus were sitting side by side on the bed, legs tucked under the blankets, mugs of tea in their hands. They were both staring straight ahead, as though they were watching television, but the wall was blank, greyish-green. Cracks in the paint.

Her hands were shaking. "I should have killed her."

Remus shook his head. "You couldn't have. I'm sorry, but you're not that good."

"I should have killed her."

They were both quiet. The clock on the wall ticked unnaturally loudly.

Julie tried to sip her tea and poured it down her front. She swore.

"Hey, hey, it's fine!" said Remus, jumping up, taking both the mugs and setting them on the table. He ran to get a cloth and started wiping up the mess.

"I'm sorry—I'm sorry—my hands won't stop shaking—" Julie covered her face.

"No, it's okay. Julie! It's fine!"

Suddenly she was breathing fast and hard, her gray eyes wide. "It was my fault—Marlene—Sirius—Frank and Alice—all of it—I should have _killed _her!"

She tried to jump up and Remus tried to grab her shoulders. "Julia Martha—Julie—no—"

Julie gasped in air, shuddering with the effort to breathe. "_I had her on the floor with a knife at her throat and I should have killed her!"_

Finally Remus managed to get a hold of her. "Listen to me," he said hoarsely. "_None of it was your fault._"

She let him push her back against the bed, but more because she was tired than because she was listening to anything he had said.

"Pass me my cigarettes."

Remus raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm bloody sure," said Julie.

He picked up the pack from the bedside table, slipped one out and handed it to her. She put the cigarette between her lips, but her shaky hands and breath made it impossible to light. Mutely she held the cigarette and lighter out to Remus. He sighed and lit it for her.

"Does it ever occur to you," said Remus, watching her take a drag, "that your friends all know how to light a cigarette and none of them smoke, because you make us light them all for you?"

Julie started to laugh, wildly, and then coughed a few times. "Remus—you're my only friend. They're all dead!"

He froze for a minute. "Jesus."

They sat silent. Julie blew smoke across the room and Remus screwed up his face.

"Remus."

"Yeah?"

"I can't remember anything."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"All I can think about is Bellatrix Lestrange. I can't remember what came before."

Remus moved closer to her. "Yes, you can. You can remember. Tell me about when you were a kid."

Julie looked blank.

"Amanda. Your sister, tell me about Amanda."

She sighed, and blew smoke.


	2. Beginnings

She remembered a dim room, and her father, who seemed very tall, lifting her high in the air. She was four, and twelve years later she would stand at exactly his height. He laughed and tossed her in the air, and she—little Julia—was screaming with joy, pale hair flying. When she was six, her father moved to America, alone.

She remembered her cousins' paddling pool, on a bright day in Ottery St. Catchpole. Mya and Kate King, they were named, and they were older and bossier, so Julia hit Mya for calling her a swot.

She remembered Amanda, tiny Amy crawling across the floor, Amy walking and talking.

And she remembered the first time she used magic. She was at the ocean with her mum and Amy. Amy had a white sunhat that made her look like a mushroom, and Julie had a new red swimsuit. Margaret, their mum, was sitting on the pebbly sand, just watching the horizon. Julie hopped through the breakers with Amy for a bit, but she was seven and Amy was just three, and she didn't want to spend all her time with such a baby. She struck out alone, aiming for a craggy black rock rearing out of the sea a ways away.

It was farther than she thought, of course. But Julie was a strong swimmer, and fearless. (Not brave—fearless—it's quite different.) She swam slowly but steadily for a good twenty minutes before she reached the rock. It was slippery and hard to climb onto, and she cut herself on the black stone, but she was stubborn as well. Finally she stood up. There were a few dismal pieces of seaweed clinging to the tiny island, and a seagull circled above. When she turned and looked back to shore, it took her a moment to spot her mum. She had stood up and was looking out towards Julie. Amy was still hopping about in her puffy white hat. Julie waved at her mum, and she waved back, shouting something, Julie could tell. She didn't care. She was by herself now, finally she had some privacy. She turned away and sat down on the scratchy, silt-covered rock, and stared out to sea. A few sailboats passed by.

A splashing surprised her, and she spun around, scraping her legs. Margaret had swum after her, and she was fast, long legs scissoring, arms pushing herself through the water like a badger pushes through earth. She grabbed on to the rock's edge.

"_Julia Martha!_" she hissed. "Couldn't you hear me calling you back? What were you thinking, swimming out this far?"

"Mum, no!" shouted Julie. "I can swim, I wanted to be by _myself!_" And suddenly she saw a wave coming towards her, _away from the beach_, turning around and growing in size, until it crashed down on her mother's head.

In the silence that followed the breaking of a wave, Julie sat with her mouth open. Then she sprang up, suddenly worried, but Margaret had already surfaced, spluttering, hair plastered to her face.

"Mum—sorry—I don't know how that happened—"

"I know," said Margaret grimly. "Come on, you can hold on to my shoulders on the way back."

They were both silent as they swam back, Julie meek and ashamed, Margaret thoughtful, with her mouth set in a forbidding line. Amy was still hopping through the breakers, still looking for all the world like a mushroom in her little white hat, just as if nothing had changed.

Amy showed her magic much earlier than seven, and in much smaller ways. Maybe when she was five, they started to notice strange things about her. Toys that had been lost for weeks would reappear without explanation. When she got raspberry jelly all over herself, it was gone by the time Margaret dragged her to the washroom. She learned how to read in just two days, and once, when she had hurt herself and was crying, a shower of silver sparks came down from her bedroom ceiling.

Everything was easier for Amy. She never picked fights in the schoolyard, coming home bloody and triumphant, holding another girl's tooth, the way Julie did. (Margaret told her to throw it away, but she kept it, put it in the shoebox under her bed.) Amy never got enough detentions to earn herself a suspension. (Margaret made Julie do schoolwork every day of the week she was out, 'til seven at night.) In fact, Amy never earned any detentions at all. She was good at controlling her magic and keeping it secret. Julie, however, had a mysterious instance in which she ended up fifteen metres high in a tree, while being chased by a group of her many enemies. She tried to say that she was simply a very fast climber, but the fact remained that half the schoolyard had seen her at the bottom of the tree one minute, and ten seconds later at the top, and no one was _that_ fast. She wasn't punished, simply because there was no school rule that she seemed to have broken, but she was viewed with a great deal of suspicion after that.

In fact, Julie didn't really make many friends at school. She would sit with the boys in her year, who tolerated her because she was good at football and had beaten most of them in fights. But none of them really interested her. Amy, on the other hand, was friends with everyone in her nursery school, and then with everyone in primary school. For Amy's birthdays, Margaret made lemon cake and had nine or ten little girls and boys come to their house. For her birthdays, Julie got a ten-pound note from her mother and a ride into Inverness, where she would buy herself as many books as she could afford.

When the expected letter came on her eleventh birthday, Julie thought her mum might have gone into the bedroom for so long just to cry. She'd gone into the washroom and wet her eyes and pulled back her composure, but there are only so many times you can go to sleep in your mother's lap and not learn her face—learn how her mouth crumpled a little bit when she was upset, her cheeks paled when she was angry, her eyes crinkled when she smiled.

Amy was excited. She ran around and around the house, three rooms on the bottom floor, and then she thundered up the stairs and down again. Julie read through the two sheets of paper over and over again.

_…you have been accepted…witchcraft and wizardry…wand…may not own a broomstick…_

"Where do I get all this stuff?" she asked suddenly.

Margaret took the list out of her hand and held it up to the light. "London."

"Really," said Julie sarcastically. "They sell magic wands, in London."

"Yeah, they do," said Margaret, irritated.

Amy stopped bouncing. "Can I get one?"

"No!" said Julie and Margaret at the same time.

Amy frowned at them.

***

It was April, Easter holidays. They stayed in a small hotel in Uxbridge, and they took the Underground to all the touristy places—Hyde Park, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square and Julie's favorite, the Tower of London.

On Friday Margaret took them into the busy center of town. Crowds of ordinary-looking people rushed by. The shops were large, shiny and new. Julie scanned the street, looking for anything that seemed magical at all. Her mum kept a firm hand on each daughter's shoulder as she marched them towards a large record store. But they didn't go in. Instead, Margaret pulled the girls over to a small, dingy pub, one that Julie hadn't even noticed at first. _The Leaky Cauldron_, she read to herself from the sign.

A small bell tinkled. The pub was dim and shabby, with five or six odd-looking people sitting at the rickety tables. A tall, stooped man was behind the bar, wiping and putting away glasses. He peered at them.

"Is that—Margaret Frazier!" He put down the glass in his hands and smiled. "It has been a _long_ time."

Julie and Amy turned and stared at their mother. She had never mentioned the fact that magical people might know who she was.

Margaret smiled tight-lipped. "Tom. Yes, it has, I'm afraid, but no time to catch up. We're heading to Diagon Alley."

Tom nodded and gestured them around the bar. He followed them into a small courtyard, empty other than a few dustbins. Julie wondered if perhaps they would have to climb into the dustbins.

"Shopping for yourself or the kids?" asked Tom.

Margaret clearly didn't want to prolong their conversation. "Kids," she said, jerking her head toward her older daughter, "Julie's going to Hogwarts."

Tom inclined his head at Julie. "Congratulations."

"Thanks," replied Julie very quietly.

Tom tapped a brick on the wall with his wand. The girls stood wide-eyed as an arched doorway opened up. But their mother stood unmoved, hands on the girls' shoulders, face set.

Margaret Frazier, Muggle, led her daughters into a bright new world.


	3. Hello and Goodbye

Six months in Inverness is a long time. Six months with a wand in your attic, an ebony, dragon heartstring wand that you can't use, and an owl in your bedroom. Julie passed the time by reading her new schoolbooks, again and again and again. She learned the names of hundreds of magical herbs, memorized spells, and devoured histories of magic. Names of goblins and giants and sorcerors got jumbled together in her head. She poked through her potion ingredients, until one day she lit a handful of batwings on fire, scorching the kitchen floor, and Margaret took her potions kit away.

Real life was less important. She played football with the boys at school and scraped by in her classes, but even science, formerly her favorite class, had lost any luster. Why make things blow up with baking soda when it could be done with a word?

Spring slowly turned into summer. Summer crawled by. August arrived, and Margaret bought Julie a trunk, helped her neatly pack her books and robes. Late in the month she sat her daughter down and told her what she needed to know. That there was a wizard who started gaining power in Britain, a wizard whose name most people didn't like to use, a wizard who seemed unstoppable. Voldemort.

Julie-eleven. She practiced punches on people she didn't like, and she wasn't afraid of anything.

People are stupid when they're young.

***

And here she was. On the platform. Looking around, trying to discern her future classmates through the steam. Snippets of conversation floated past her.

"I'm going to need a new broom..."

"Marlene, for God's sake, you can't wear that..."

"...Ministry's completely useless on the matter..."

"CISSY! Over here! Cissy..."

Amy reached over and took Julie's hand, bouncing up and down a bit with excitement.

"All right, well, this is it," said Margaret uncomfortably. "Can you get the trunk on the train yourself?"

"

Sure," said Julie, eager to be gone. She stood on tiptoes so her mother could kiss her cheek, hugged Amy haphazardly, and lugged her trunk away, owl cage balanced precariously on top. She turned once and looked back and her family was already gone.

Two boys rushed past her and jumped up onto the train. She could hear an owl screech somewhere. Julie took a deep breath and started to pull her trunk up. As she bumped it into the train she felt part of the weight lift up-someone had taken the other end. A girl Julie's age, with dark brown hair and freckles.

"Hi," she said nervously. "I'm Mary, Mary Macdonald."

"Julia, but people I like call me Julie."

"Nice owl." The owl in question blinked his yellow eyes as he was carried onto the train and edged into the corridor. "Where are we taking this?"

Julie shrugged.

"Okay, you're sitting with me," said Mary firmly. She set the trunk down and let Julie drag it while she went ahead with the owl.

Mary led her about half way down the train to her compartment. In that time they established that they were both first years, Mary had already put her things in the compartment, and yes, that was a Scottish accent Julie had-"you got a problem with that?"

"No. My grandma's Scottish."

There were two girls in the compartment already, a few years older. One of them smiled and introduced herself right away.

"Alice Montague, this is Maggie Porter. We're third years."

Alice had a round, friendly face and honey blond hair, while Maggie had dark skin and tons and tons of braids.

They sat down and made themselves comfortable. Alice and Maggie were talking about their classmates, gossiping about who had gone where over the summer and such.

With a lurch the train began to move, and in that same instant the compartment door slid open. There was another first year girl. Mary was cute, with dark eyes and a pale, pointed face, but this girl was really pretty, with thick blond hair and baby blue eyes-and Julie was fairly sure she was wearing makeup.

Alice introduced herself and Maggie again as she helped the girl stow away her trunk. The girl's name was Marlene.

The train rattled along. Around lunchtime a witch came in with a lunchcart and Marlene bought Pumpkin Pasties and Chocolate Frogs for everyone, even the third years. They were better than any Muggle candy Julie had ever had.

The door slid open with a bang. A girl and a boy walked in, neither making eye contact with anyone. The girl was a redhead, Julie saw with interest, but her hair was much more vivid than Julie's copper-gold, and her eyes were brighter as well, emerald green. Her face was slightly flushed and a little puffy, as though she had just been crying. The boy was thin-scrawny, to be honest, with an unkempt look and lank black hair falling over his eyes.

"Is there room for us?" asked the girl.

"No-"

"Yes!"

Julie and Alice spoke at the same time. The older girl sprang up, pushing her coat away and nudging Maggie to the side. Maggie rolled her eyes as she moved over, but she was smiling.

"What are your names?" asked Alice happily. Julie was shocked to see the poisonously scornful look the boy gave her, but his ginger friend didn't seem to notice.

"I'm Lily, this is Sev."

After a long pause, Alice and Maggie started to tell the younger students about the Sorting. Eventually the conversation devolved into a fight about which house was better-Hufflepuff (Alice's) or Gryffindor (Maggie's).

The train sped on, the sun crept across the sky.

***

That night, the five girls in the Gryffindor dormitory went straight to sleep, tired and full. Lily Evans, Marlene McKinnon, Mary Macdonald, Niamh Fairchild, Julia Frazier. (Three of them wouldn't live past thirty.) An owl sped circled the tower, beating soft wings, silent as a ghost.

And what else do you need to know? What is Hogwarts like for anyone? There were classes, and feasts, and Quidditch matches. Julie got good grades most of the time, and terrible grades sometimes, and once she accidentally destroyed a library book. There were summers in Scotland, and her mum insisting she learn Muggle history and science, and there were Christmases at Hogwarts, and Marlene burning her fingers every year when they toasted things in the common room fire. And there was sex, starting in fifth year for Julie and Marlene, later for most of the others. And there were worse things-jinxes and hexes and rumors, rumors about certain students with a mark on their left forearm.

We can skip that. Let's begin in sixth year, before the first death.

You know what it's like. The important thing to remember is this: people are stupid when they're young.


	4. London Calling

The summer of 1976 was unusually warm, and the grass was a little brown. Margaret set her daughters to poetry-John Donne, Shakespeare, Marlowe-and taught them French and German. Julie spent her off time smoking and sitting around with Ian Forester, the latest in a series Amy liked to call Julie's Boy of the Summer. The smoking was a secret-having a doctor for a mother does put a damper on recreational drug use-so she spent a great deal of time with Ian, trying to stay out of her own house. Technically they could have taken the bus into Inverness proper, but it was a fifteen-minute walk followed by a half-hour ride, and more often than not they were too lazy.

It was an odd summer. Not for the first time, Julie realized that her mother was keeping secrets. Amy was more irritable than usual, and she spent an unusual amount of time in her room. And Julie, of course, was more often than not out late at night, going to parties, sometimes, or just sitting with Ian and his mates having a beer, blowing smoke into the night air, talking about punk rock or Scottish independence. The three Fraziers were growing apart, splintering into separated silence, and often they would only see each other all together at meals.

One day in the middle of August Julie and Ian were lying on their backs in the grass. Across the road the two Aiken boys were messing around with their brand-new BB guns, shooting at sparrows and missing, alternately laughing and swearing. Ian turned his head to look at her. He had very dark blue eyes and freckles, and he always had a very earnest expression on his face, which was both endearing and sometimes a bit frustrating.

"When are you going away?"

Julie didn't answer for a bit, concentrating on the cigarette in her hand, the swirl of the smoke that was hardly visible against the bright sky. Finally, seeing no way to avoid it, she said, "August thirtieth."

"I still don't understand why I can't write you," he said quietly.

"Told you, the school isn't registered with the post office. Anyway-what are you worrying about this for? We've three weeks!" She sat up and stubbed the cigarette out against the ground, frowning.

Ian sighed. "You know, Julie, sometimes I think-"

_BANG._

A gunshot cut him off, followed by a horrible screeching noise. Andrew Aiken had hit something, and it wasn't a sparrow.

Julie sprang to her feet and took off running. Ian spluttered and scrambled to his feet but she was already vaulting over the low stone wall and dashing across the road.

"What the hell d'you think you're doing? Bloody morons-don't touch it-don't touch it!" The boys jumped back in alarm and Julie stumbled to her knees, out of breath. She had guessed right. It was an owl the boys had shot down, and now it was struggling on the ground. By pure luck the bird had been hit right in its chest, and luridly bright blood was pumping out.

"Get away, go away, you stupid idiots!" Julie muttered, carefully slipping her trembling hands under the soft, feathery body and praying the boys hadn't noticed the small scroll tied to the bird's leg.

"That's our bird!" said Robbie angrily.

Julie looked murderously at him, and he cowered away.

"Shootin' an owl is _illegal_. It's the queen's bird!" She was too sure of herself for them to argue. Bird in hands, frighteningly limp, she turned and bumped into Ian.

"Did you just say owls are the queen's bird?" he asked, a bit out of breath. "I'm pretty sure that's swans."

She huffed and walked around him. "Not now, for god's sake."

He started to say something else but she fairly ran, cradling the bird to her chest at the same time as she maneuvered the scroll off. Ian could wait, and he would wait; he was that kind of boy.

"Mum? Mum!"

The door clattered shut behind her. Margaret walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. "What?" Mutely Julie held out the owl. It was still now, no more than a warm bundle of feathers, and it left a shockingly bright red stain across the front of her t-shirt. Margaret didn't waste a single word. She went into the kitchen, her daughter following, and spread out a clean dishtowel on the table. Julie set the bird down gently on the cloth and stood back while her mother went to work. She washed her hands well and then pulled a pair of tweezers out from a drawer. She lit the stove and passed the tweezers through the flame, sterilizing them. Then she sat down in front of the bird and, with a surprising gentleness, began to run her fingers through the feathers. Julie looked on in slight horror as her mother plucked out the small pellet that had caused all the trouble. It was dripping with blood, and Margaret's fingers were red as well. She could feel bile rising in her throat, and she forced herself to look away.

It was with some surprise that she looked down and realized she still had the little scroll in her hand. It had been smashed in her hand, and when she unrolled it the spidery, angular script was a bit smeared.

_ -Meggie, _

_You should_

She only read three words before Margaret's hand covered the rest. She had her eyebrows raised in silent disapproval, and Julie grimaced and let the note go. Margaret frowned as she read the paper, and then she crumpled it up into a ball and dropped it into the trash without a second glance.

"She doesn't know what she's talking about," she muttered, turning, going back to the owl. Outside, the short spell of sun was ending. The sky was growing gray and hazy. In the distance, the gunshots had started again.

Another day, the phone rang. Julie and Amy were sitting in the kitchen, eating marmalade on sandwiches, and Margaret was upstairs. "Julie, can you get that?" Margaret yelled. "I'm expecting a call from Fiona."

Julie slid off her stool, licking her fingers clean and wiping them on her jeans. She lifted the phone off the wall.

"Hello?"

"I'm calling for Margaret Frazier." Julie frowned. It wasn't Fiona. First, it was a man, and second, he clearly wasn't local-he spoke with a crisp southern English accent, which immediately put him under suspicion.

"Yeah, who's this?" asked Julie, about as politely as you can say something like that.

"This is Alexander Potter."

Julie's eyebrows shot up. "Alexander what now?"

There was an audible sigh on the other end of the line. "Alexander Potter, ex-Head of the Auror office."

"Right." Julie set down the phone. "Mum!" she called. "James Potter's _dad_ is calling for you!"

Margaret came downstairs, remarkably unsurprised, and took the phone. Julie sat back down at the counter and went back to her sandwich, listening very hard and trying to appear as if she wasn't.

Margaret turned away from the girls and started to speak.

"Hello? Yes, this is she...sorry about that...I see...No, that wasn't my plan...Of course. No, I understood the risks...exactly...thank you very much, Alex. I'll be in touch. All right...okay. I'll call you...goodbye."

She slammed the phone into the receiver, her mouth set in a straight line. "Bloody fool doesn't know his own business," she said, and without another word she went back upstairs. Julie and Amy sat still as the sound of footsteps retreated. Then they stood up and put their plates in the sink.

Julie went outside and lit a cigarette. Long, deep breaths. Then she went off to find Ian.

* * *

(A/N: I was originally hoping to update weekly, but obviously that's not happening! I'll try to be faster next time. Also, don't worry, the introductory stuff is almost over. Next chapter is at Hogwarts!

Reviews make my day, thank you so much **42-Worlds-Apart**!)


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